Just a blog from me, teaching English and instructing teachers in a TEFL course, in Mexico city.

Friday, November 19, 2010

Deported - From Mexico?

Here's an interesting story of reversal...an American deported from Mexico back to the US. "Crash" is not exactly your average American business traveler or tourist, but here is his story of being deported from Mexico back to the US, which is surprisingly similar to the stories of many, many thousands of Mexicans experiencing the same fate each year.

TIJUANA — The two men could barely communicate. One was a Mexican laborer, the other an American wanderer, neither with any pesos in his pockets. But they bonded, having just gone through similar ordeals.

“The migra got me,” lamented the downcast Mexican, using slang for the United States Border Patrol.

“I know what you mean,” said the American, sitting on a bench near Tijuana’s seedy Avenida Revolución, strumming his guitar in the hopes someone might toss him some change. “I was deported, too.”

The United States government formally deported or otherwise returned more than a million foreigners — most of them Mexicans — according to immigration data. That figure has risen steadily over the years. But much to the surprise of many Americans, there is a trickle of deportees that flows north from Mexico to the United States as well.

Between January and September, the National Migration Institute, Mexico’s immigration service, deported 350 Americans, some of them lawbreakers who had finished prison sentences in the country, but others merely travelers who were found to be without proper paperwork.